Inmate, warden’s wife found 10 years after vanishing

OKLAHOMA CITY  A convicted murderer and a deputy warden's wife who disappeared nearly 11 years ago have been found living together and raising chickens in Texas. The woman said she was held captive the whole time, staying with the killer out of fear her family would be harmed if she fled.

Bobbi Parker, 42, was reunited with her husband Tuesday as authorities tried to piece together details of the strange case.

A tip generated by the TV show "America's Most Wanted" led law enforcement to a mobile home in Campti, Texas, where escaped convict Randolph Dial was arrested Monday, said FBI agent Salvador Hernandez. Parker was found a short time later working at a nearby chicken farm; the two were living under assumed names.

The FBI questioned Bobbi Parker Tuesday in Texas.

Dial was convicted of the 1981 murder of a karate instructor. He had obtained trusty status at the Oklahoma State Reformatory, and he ran an inmate pottery program with Bobbi Parker and had access to the couple's home during the day in staff housing on prison grounds.

In a jailhouse interview with reporters Tuesday, Dial, 60, said he took Parker at knifepoint when he escaped.

Dial said their relationship was never romantic. He likened Parker's relationship to him as "Stockholm Syndrome," where kidnapping victims become sympathetic to their captors, often out of fear of violence.

"She was living under the impression if she ever tried to get away, I would get away and I would make her regret it, particularly toward her family," Dial said. "I didn't mean it, but she didn't know that."